JUST HAVING FUN

1. AFGHANISTAN

2. I. FICTION
SHORT STORY
• The Kite Runner
• Horses of Heaven

3. NOVEL
FlashMan
The End of Manners

4. II. NON- FICTION / EXPOSETORY
WRITING
• Personal Narrative
• Published in 1840, this is an important early description of
travels in Afghanistan. Leaving behind a career at the Bar
and a talent for first-class cricket, Godfrey Thomas Vigne
(1801-63) turned to travel and spent seven years (1832-9)
in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent. His Personal
Narrative is a compelling account of local life, scenery and
customs, enhanced by his own accomplished drawings.
Perhaps the first Englishman to reach Kabul, he had several
interviews with the emir, Dost Mohammad Khan (1793-
1863). Vigne's account, with its insights into the resources
and influential people in the region, was read keenly by
players of the Great Game, as Russia and Britain vied for
influence in this remote yet strategically significant area.

5. Autobiography
• Afghanistan (/æfˈɡænɪstæn/ ( listen); Pashto/Dari: ‫افغان‬
‫ستان‬, Pashto: Afġānistān [avɣɒnisˈtɒn, abɣɒnisˈtɒn][9],
Dari: Afġānestān[avɣɒnesˈtɒn]), officially the Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked
country located within South Asia and Central
Asia.[5][10] The country has a population of 33 million,
making it the 42nd most populous country in the
world. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan in the south
and east; Iran in the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
and Tajikistan in the north; and China in the far
northeast. Its territory covers 652,000 square
kilometers (252,000 sq mi), making it the 41st
largest country in the world.

6. • Afghanistan is a unitary presidential Islamic
republic with Islam as an official state religion.
It is a member of the United Nations,
the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation,
the Group of 77, the Economic Cooperation
Organization, and the Non-Aligned
Movement. Afghanistan's economy is the
world's 108th largest, with a GDP of $64.08
billion; the country fares much worse in terms
of per-capita GDP (PPP), ranking 167th out of
186 countries in a 2016 report from
the International Monetary Fund.[12]

7. ESSAY
Afghanistan has had a history of dramatic
unfortunate events that have affected Afghans’ quality
of life. The country is very poor and has an unsettled
government with little opportunity for the people.
Nature has not been a friend to Afghanistan with
earthquakes, droughts, and severe weather conditions.
Afghanistan was not a country known to everyone. But
now the entire world is watching as the country
struggles to exist. The purpose of this paper was to
reveal Afghanistan’s people and their history, through
my discussion of the past and current events in
Afghanistan.

8. Interview
Mohsin Hamid recommends the best
Transnational Literature
Beleaguered 'citizens of nowhere' will be
pleased to know they have their own literary
genre. For anyone who has ever wondered where
they belong, or why, when you leave your home
country, it's never the same when you return,
here are the best five books to read—including
some by the greatest authors of the 20th century.

9. You’ve agreed to take on the topic of
‘transnational literature.’ I’d like to start our
discussion by asking you to define it.
There is clearly a lot of academic writing
on this subject, I am not familiar with it at all. I
tend to take ideas like transnational literature
and define them for myself. I think of
transnational literature as writing which spans
the borders of countries and blurs lines
between them.

10. Exit West, your latest novel, certainly fits
within the rubric of transnational literature.
Please tell us about it.
It’s a novel that imagines a world where
people can suddenly move beyond their borders.
We follow two characters, Nadia and Saeed, who
flee an unnamed city that is undergoing a
political apocalypse and migrate, first to Mykonos
and then to Britain and then to California. And, as
they’re migrating, millions and perhaps billions of
other people are migrating as well. So the novel is
an attempt to look at the universality of
migration and it is about a world where physical
migration is becoming universal.

11. NEWS ARTICLE

12. The Economist explains: The roots of
Afghanistan’s tribal tensions

13. TODAY, August 31st, Afghan politicians and
writers will gather to mark Baluch-Pushtun Unity
Day, which celebrates the cultural bonds
between the two ethnic groups. The day might
not be entirely upbeat, though. At the same
event last year one of the speakers warned that
“common enemies” were victimising Baluchis
and Pushtuns. Such language is routine in
Afghanistan, a country frazzled by tribal
divisions. But how did these tensions start, and
how do they influence Afghan life today?

14. Afghanistan has been ethnically diverse for millennia.
Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, wrote about the
Pushtuns in the fifth century BC. Tajiks, the country’s
second-largest group after Pushtuns, are ancient too.
About 2.5m Uzbeks live along the northern mountains,
and a similar number of Hazara live in the middle of the
country, west of Kabul. Smaller clusters of Arabs and
Punjabis, among others, also huddle among
Afghanistan’s hills and valleys. All told, 14 recognised
ethnic groups live in Afghanistan today. Each is
honoured in the national anthem and protected by the
constitution.

15. Foreign influences have chiselled these communities into distinctive
shapes. Religion is a prime example. Most Afghans are Sunni Muslims,
but the Hazara people adopted Shiism from the Safavid Persians.
Indian Sikhs also found converts in Afghanistan. Outsiders have
moulded Afghan culture in more ostensibly practical ways, too. Persia
contributed to its neighbour’s linguistic diversity: half of all Afghans
now speak Dari, the local form of Persian. Many Afghan Tajiks, with
links to cosmopolitan Iran, live in towns. This is in jagged contrast to
the rural Baluchis. These differences have also been sharpened by
politics. Pushtun attempts to unify the country in the 19th century
caused widespread resentment in other groups. At the same time,
foreigners have widened tribal differences for their own gain. Shia Iran
backed Hazara militias against the Soviets in the 1980s, whereas
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have helped the predominantly Pushtun
Taliban.

16. The results of this are clear today. Many Afghans clutch
at their tribe rather than their country. These attitudes
slide into political life. Regional politicians appeal to
their own clan rather than to the national interest, and
officials are often promoted on kinship instead of
merit. None of this encourages good governance:
ethnic disputes in parliament have ended in punch-ups.
Similar problems taint society generally. Students bicker
about whether signs at Herat University should be
written in Dari or Pushtun. Radio stations fire up
supporters with sectarian rhetoric.

17. The country’s violence is also linked to these
ethnic tensions. Some Pushtun troops are
reluctant to fight their kinsmen in the Taliban, a
group that other Afghans see as an extension of
Pushtun supremacism. The government is not
oblivious to these problems. Inciting ethnic
hatred is now a crime, and new identity cards
focus more on a shared national character. But
even if they do not say it publicly, many Afghans
remain suspicious of the “common enemies”
inside their own country.

18. III. Drama
•Comedy

19. THE COMEDY OF ERRORS [2012]
• Written by: William Shakespeare
Directed by: Corinne Jaber
• Part of the 2012 Globe to Globe Festival.
• Performed in Dari Persian by Roy-e-Sabs, from Kabul,
Afghanistan.
• Roy-e-Sabs is a theatrical miracle. In 2005, the group
performedLove Labour's Lost in an ancient garden in war-
ravaged Kabul, close to where the founder of the Mughal
Empire lies buried. The controversial production saw men
and women acting together, the women occasionally not
wearing headscarves, and lovers holding hands - truly
audacious things to rehearse in modern Afghanistan. For
the first time, they are leaving Kabul to come to the Globe
with a new production of The Comedy of Errors.

20. SYNOPSIS
• Two sets of identical twins, separated as babies during
a sandstorm in this brand new Afghan adaptation of
Shakespeare's classic, find themselves in the city of
Kabul for the first time as adults. Soon, their friends
mistake the twins for one another and bewilderment
abounds, as the wife of one man declares the other to
be her husband, pronouncing him mad when he denies
the claim. Exuberant, mystical and brilliantly farcical,
Shakespeare's shortest play is a romantic comedy of
confusion and ultimate reunion. Rah-e Sabz's
adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy is set in the
bustling back streets of modern-day Kabul, places of
laughter and joy that few foreigners ever get to see or
hear about.

21. TRAGEDY
Don’t cry, God is kind

22. IV. Poetry
• Jalaluddin Rumi (Dari Poet)
– Sometimes I Forget Completely
– Emptiness
– Enough Words?
– Who Makes These Changes?
• Khushal Khan Khattak (Pashto Poet)
– "Adam Kheleh Afridei"
– Life's no life when honor's left
– The knowing, the perceptive man
– The coming of winter
• Khalilullah Khalili (Dari Poet)
– Oh' Great Mountain
– Bitter fruit falling upon the earth

23. Pir Of Herat Khwaja Abdullah Ansari
(Dari Poet)
From the unmanifest I came
Ahmad Shah Durrani (Pashto Poet)
Love of a Nation
Hanzala of Badghis (Dari Poet)
Leadership
Rabi'a Balkhi (Dari Poet)
Love's Web
Abu Shukur of Balkh (Dari Poet)
A tree with a bitter seed
Daqiqi of Balkh (Dari Poet)
O' my idol! A cloud from paradise

24. V. FOLKLORE
• FAIRYTALE

25. Once Upon A Time

26. Although she met her husband in college, Nasrine says
her work with Kabultec is more so a legacy of her father
and mother.
“My father and mother were the first – literally the first
– Afghan couple with both the husband and wife as
graduates of Afghan high school. It’s really a very
important event in the history of Afghanistan. My mom
was one of the first six girls who graduated from high
school for the first time.”

27. They met through a serendipitous chain of
events.
“My mom was at the time in 10th or 11th
grade and had problems in sciences – calculus,
algebra, and physics – and my dad’s PhD was
in physics and mathematics. So, her brothers
hired him to be her private tutor. And the way
she reported it, they fell in love the first
night.”
Having two educated parents meant
Nasrine had a dynamic, scholastic upbringing.

28. “My house, as a result of these two marrying,
we had the most educated of Kabul come to
our house. They were not necessarily very
wealthy people, but they were the most
educated. So it was like a grandiose salon of
beautiful ideas, of books, of progress. All
these things that in the early 1950s, after the
Second World War, coming into being in the
world. Extremely exciting. And with it, of
course, all these ideals and aspirations for
Afghanistan.”

29. Nasrine’s students will keep her parents’ dream
alive for the next generation of Afghans. It is her
greatest hope that literacy will give the couples in
her program the power to take control of their
destinies and mold the future of their country
into something beautiful.
Love can come in many forms. This
Valentine’s Day share your love with women and
men halfway around the world – read a book in
honor of someone fighting for their right to
literacy; pen a Valentine to a student working for
a brighter future; or share your own education
love story in the comments below. We can’t wait
to hear it.

30. LEGEND

32. TALES

34. MYTHS

35. Afghans have always beaten foreign armies, from
Alexander the Great to modern times
Afghan history is certainly littered with occasions
when foreign invaders were humiliated. But there
have also been many cases when foreign armies
penetrated the country and inflicted major
defeats. In 330BC, Alexander the Great marched
through the area of central Asia that is
now Afghanistan, meeting little opposition. More
than a millennium later, the Mongol leader
Genghis Khan also brushed resistance aside.

36. Since Afghanistan emerged as a modern state, there have been three
wars with Britain. The British invasion of 1839 produced initial
victory for the intruders followed by stunning defeat followed by a
second victory. In 1878, the British invaded again. Though they
suffered a major defeat at Maiwand, their main army beat the
Afghans. The British then re-drew the frontier of British India up to
the Khyber Pass, and Afghanistan had to cede various frontier areas.
In the Third Anglo-Afghan war, the fighting was launched by the
Afghans. Amanullah Khan sent troops into British India in 1919.
Within a month they were forced to retreat, in part because British
planes bombed Kabul in one of the first displays of airpower in
central Asia. The war ended in tactical victory for the British but their
troop losses were twice those of the Afghans, suggesting the war
was a strategic defeat. The British abandoned control of Afghan
foreign policy at last.

37. The results of the three Anglo-Afghan wars
undermine the claim that Afghans always defeat
foreigners. What is true is that foreigners have
always had a hard time occupying the country for
long. The British came to understand that. From
bitter experience they kept their interventions
short, preferring domination over foreign affairs to
the option of colonisation that they adopted in
India.

38. FABLES

39. The Fox and the Cat
Aesop
A fox was boasting to a cat of its clever devices for escaping its enemies.
"I have a whole bag of tricks," he said, "which contains a hundred ways
of escaping my enemies."
"I have only one," said the cat. "But I can generally manage with that."
Just at that moment they heard the cry of a pack of hounds coming
towards them, and the cat immediately scampered up a tree and hid
herself in the boughs.
"This is my plan," said the cat. "What are you going to do?"
The fox thought first of one way, then of another, and while he was
debating, the hounds came nearer and nearer, and at last the fox in his
confusion was caught up by the hounds and soon killed by the
huntsmen.
Miss Puss, who had been looking on, said, "Better one safe way than a
hundred on which you cannot reckon."

40. VI. Graphic Novels

41. NON- FICTION

42. FICTION